Meredith’s Response

 

Life After the Other Woman

Posted on February 21, 2012 by The 180 Program

While this is written by a woman…the lessons learned can be applied regardless of gender.

This year Rob and I will celebrate 27 years of marriage but if you ask only 18 of those have been good. To see us today, if you were not aware of our past, you would never know that 14 years ago Rob had an affair with my best friend. Rob has gone into some detail on rwkendall.com, if you would like the background for this blog. But this past 2 weeks has been difficult as people we either have known in our past, or have become acquaintances with recently, are having issues overcoming an affair and they want to give up. So today I want to share “my life after the other woman”.

Before I get to the point of when Rob and I decided that we would work on our marriage there was a few months of wandering aimlessly in the desert wondering if this feeling would ever go away. This feeling of why me? What did I do or not do? We go to church this is not supposed to be happening like this….to how am I going to survive?

How am I going to survive? I was a stay at home mom with only a year of college and 3 girls to take care. That morning when Rob said I don’t want to be married anymore I was put into “emergency mode”. I was not thinking rationally. I was thinking I need food on the table and to do that. I need to make money…so my first thought was – “I have lost all this weight and I look pretty good. You don’t need a college degree and they make good money. So I guess I will go apply at all the Gentleman’s Club’s and become a stripper”. I am not lying that was my first thought.

Thankfully, before I could make the first inquiry I had answered an ad for an accounting firm and got the job. It was part-time, but worked around the girl’s school schedule so it was perfect. Rob had moved out and had come over one evening. He had the divorce decree written out, which included a fair amount for child support. This is what he wanted and I was going quietly. But all the while I could not believe I had ended up here. Thankful that at that time Jaci Velasquez had made popular a song written by David and Nicole C Mullen, called “On My Knees”. It was being played multiple times a day and when it came on I would turn up the radio, hit my knees and sing at the top of my lungs this prayer to God.

Cause I’ve learned in laughter or in pain
How to survive!
I get on my knees!
There I am before the Love
That changes me
See I don’t know how
But there’s power
When I’m on my knees

You see I had just become a Christian a couple years before all this happened.

So I took one day at a time. I had good days and bad. I cried uncontrollably and then find myself laughing for no reason. I couldn’t breathe. I lost even more weight because I was not eating. I was just maintaining because Rob left and I had 3 kids to take care of.

Each day got easier to get up and function and I craved time with my church family; Bible studies and group get togethers. Then it changed. No one would talk to me, I had no support. I became the charity case…it seemed that I was no longer welcome there. Where was I supposed to go? Thankfully one person stayed my friend. I could call her at all hours and cry. She would relive every detail with me and never offered advice unless I asked. She lived the saying “show up and shut up’. She lived close enough that I could call her and either she would come over or I would go over there and at 3am we would have a Cran-Grape drink that had been warmed in the microwave.

Christmas was closing in and I wanted one more day as a family. I asked Rob to come home Christmas Eve and stay in the extra room so we could spend our last Christmas together as a family. He agreed but said he would need to leave late afternoon after presents and dinner. We had a great day. The time came for him to leave and he said he could stay a little longer. He ended up staying and helping to put the kids in bed. It was late and he asked if he could stay another night in the extra room.

This pattern repeated for the next few days. He would come over after work and stay for dinner and would end up staying in the extra room. I was just glad to have him back home. Then one afternoon I walked in after work and Rob was laying down prostrate in the living room, he was crying. He wanted to make it work. He did not want this divorce, he wanted his family back. I was excited my prayers have been answered but how do we heal from this? How do we get back to where we were or is that even possible? How do we move on?

I wanted to know everything. I wanted every detail as to where, when and why. I did not want to be blindsided later when a new detail came out and I would have to relive everything. Rob had said he would do anything to rebuild the trust and I put him to the test. He tirelessly told and retold the stories. He would wait for me to be ready to hear more and we would continue. He would hold me when I wanted to be held then he would press the pause button when I had had enough. We would learn that Love was much more than a feeling but a commitment and that love based solely on feeling is actually “lust”. Feelings can come and go but this commitment was what we wanted for our family.

There was still a problem…this person knew where we lived, where our kids went to school and our phone numbers. Remember, she WAS my best friend. Our kids were friends, we went on vacations together. She was not taking “no” for an answer. She drove by the house regularly and called. If I answered, she would hang up. I started to question whether or not Rob was telling me the truth and he would tell me he really wanted this marriage work. The feelings of being inadequate, not enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough would come flooding back. Today I see that for what it was…Satan telling me lies so that I would not trust my husband, because that was what we had to relearn…Trust.

Rob said I had the right to call him at work and if I wanted to, I could show up unannounced. Rob had been kicked out of the church and we were going it alone. Realizing that we were starting over from scratch we decided to move. Rob got a transfer, the house sold in 9 days and we headed back to Nashville. We needed time to mourn and heal. We found a church that was so large that they herded everyone in and out like cows so we just got to sit and be invisible. We were learning a new normal for our marriage.

As we went through the next year, certain dates would come and I would get depressed and angry. I began to realize that those were dates of significance. As the years have passed I have started to make new memories on those dates, instead of letting them control me, I now control them. Fall of 2011 was my best fall ever and there were few reminders. It has taken 14 years to work through most of the issues. Life after the other woman can happen but it’s up to you. How bad you want your marriage to work; if the offending spouse is truly repentant and willing to live inside of healthy boundaries give it a try… I am truly grateful that I did.